Quota party

By fiercely embracing identity politics, the Congress is ensuring its own decline and doom, says N.V.Subramanian.

By N.V. Subramanian (23 December 2011)

23 December 2011: The Congress party and the UPA-2 government it leads display at one and the same time terrible and venal flaws. While being a weak coalition government with a weak prime minister, UPA-2 exhibits authoritarian tendencies in the way it crushes public protests (the Anna Hazare and Ramdev agitations) and imposes economic (FDI-in-retail) and strategic policy decisions (Indo-US nuclear deal) on an unwilling country.

On the other hand, it flaunts the worst characteristics of a third-rate regional party that seeks power via divisive identity politics. That side of the Congress and UPA-2 is once again revealed by the minority card they have cynically played this week. They have introduced a minority quota in the general OBC reservation scheme and in the recently-introduced Lok Pal bill.
Strictly speaking, the only qualification to be part of the Lok Pal is integrity and a record of distinguished public service. But all sorts of reservations have been introduced in the Lok Pal bill, including a minority quota, which is unconstitutional.
The aim of the Congress/ UPA-2 is clear. It does not want a strong Lok Pal. It wants the regime of corruption to continue. By inserting the minority quota, it has ensured the BJP's opposition. By keeping the CBI out of the Lok Pal, it has angered Mayawati, who has been victimized by the agency. And for their part, Laloo and Mulayam Yadav do not want avenues of corruption to be plugged at all. So they will create hurdles against the Lok Pal bill.
By drafting an unacceptable Lok Pal bill, the Congress and UPA-2 hope to spread the blame of its non-passage equally among all the political parties. Certainly, in their own way, some of the other parties are also responsible, including the BJP, which does not want the CBI under the Lok Pal.
But as the party in power, the onus of getting the bill passed rests solely with the Congress. It cannot escape that responsibility. And it is the Congress and UPA-2 that Anna Hazare will target in the coming days with harsh consequences for the party and its government.
The Congress party believes that the minority quota it has introduced in the Lok Pal bill and in the generic OBC category will dramatically favour it in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh elections. Nothing of that sort will happen. The party is too far behind in the poll statistics there. Except the BJP, every party is playing the minority card. The Muslim voter is faced with the tyranny of choice.
It is hard to argue now if there is anything in the nature of a Muslim votebank. The earlier impulse of Muslim voters was to defeat the BJP any way. The Muslim voter is more relaxed now, or more divided, or has lost trust in the so-called "secular" parties that frighten him, ghettoize him, and keep him backward. If the Muslims were so afraid of the BJP, Nitish Kumar's NDA government wouldn't have won a handsome second term.
Forget winning Uttar Pradesh, identity politics is destroying the Congress, and making it incapable of ever having its own government in the Centre or in much of the "cow-belt". The logic of it is that the more hysterically you woo a section of voters, the more you become repugnant to another class of electorate.
And identity politics has not only doomed the country and made it a prisoner of coalition politics but wrecked every party that strenuously propagated it. Where is Laloo or Mulayam Yadav now? Laloo's infamous Muslim-Yadav votebank has collapsed. And if Mulayam Yadav does not wrest Uttar Pradesh from Mayawati, it is the end of the road for the Samajwadi Party.
But look who is doing well without identity politics. There is the obvious example of Narendra Modi. But there is also Nitish Kumar, Naveen Patnaik, J.Jayalalithaa and Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Quota politics politicizes people. But there is no guarantee it will pull them out of backwardness. Every party swears by the Muslims. They have fatted on Muslim votes. But are the Muslims better off?
Like honesty, non-appeasement is the best policy for political parties. Before it disastrously embraced Hindutva, the BJP had a policy of non-appeasement. By itself, it may not think it possible to return to it. But it has to to win back the confidence of all of India.
The lesson for the Congress is the same. The more by its political strategies that the Congress divides India, the less of it it will rule. At the speed the Congress is declining, it will become a quota party like the RJD or Samajwadi Party. Such a party is doomed to die. Tragically, the Congress has no one except perhaps Pranab Mukherjee who may understand this.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, www.NewsInsight.net, and writes internationally on strategic affairs. He has authored two novels, University of Love (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) and Courtesan of Storms (Har-Anand, Delhi). Email: envysub@gmail.com.

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